Hi all, this is a pretty basic question, I am doing my first brew and transferred into a, what I believed to be a clean secondary fermenter once my SG hit the target.

Both primary and secondary were cleaned with oxyclean then star san. The primary was in a plastic food grade bucket so I don't really know what fermentation of this beer looks like.

I know ales are top fermenting and this could just be a little foamy krausen. I have tried to read different forum post and some people say it's mold. Some replies just call the poster a moron for not knowing it's floating ale yeast, some say krausen, others, say leave the mold it makes the best beer ever!?

Yeah, to me, it looks look like off-gassing surface break locations. What I envision is the (remaining) yeast settling down to the bottom of the carboy with a higher abundance in the lowest points along the bottom - the channel that forms a ring around the bottom about an inch or so from the sides of the carboy. From there, nucleation points help some co2 escape and it floats to the surface. The nucleation points tend to be consistent (maybe a piece of hop material or such) so the locations on the surface remain consistent, and the bubbles congregate on the surface in small "islands", in a ring about an inch from the walls of the carboy.

When you have a full yeastcake, it's so thick with so many possible nucleation points, the "islands" are basically randomly spread across the whole surface.

Yeah, to me, it looks look like off-gassing surface break locations. What I envision is the (remaining) yeast settling down to the bottom of the carboy with a higher abundance in the lowest points along the bottom - the channel that forms a ring around the bottom about an inch or so from the sides of the carboy. From there, nucleation points help some co2 escape and it floats to the surface. The nucleation points tend to be consistent (maybe a piece of hop material or such) so the locations on the surface remain consistent, and the bubbles congregate on the surface in small "islands", in a ring about an inch from the walls of the carboy.

When you have a full yeastcake, it's so thick with so many possible nucleation points, the "islands" are basically randomly spread across the whole surface.

In the lower picture, to me, the "islands" look like conglomerations of tiny bubbles (i.e. foam), which I would contribute to off-gassing, and nothing to worry about. Plus, they've formed in a ring on the surface which corresponds with the trough ring on the bottom of the fermenter.

Mold, on the other hand, would form where the spores land on the surface and begin propagating (i.e. random locations).